Post by cherry1111 on Dec 27, 2023 12:06:01 GMT -5
To join in on the fun, my husband had his last day at work on 12/15 (laid off) and on 12/16 our washing machine broke. We also replaced both the washer and dryer because they were 14 years old and the dryer wasn’t working the most efficiently either. They are finally being delivered tomorrow.
mcppalmbeach , I wonder if a local cat rescue group would have some suggestions for other volunteers who might be able to help your mom. That does not sound like a safe or sustainable thing for her to continue doing, not to mention the toll it's taking on her relationships and finances.
I was going to suggest the same @mcpalmbeach - I feel like this is the sort of thing that with the right social media attention, could be taken over or at least helped out by other animal lovers or a rescue group.
blondemoment123, forgive my nosiness but the blood is coming from....where? whatever it is I hope he is seen ASAP, that sounds alarming!
I do not understand my FIL at ALL. He moved south about a year ago but travels up here often and stays for like 2-3 weeks, but does not plan or book anywhere to stay other than a few nights with us. He would absolutely stay with us the entire time but we set a 3 night max boundary. This time he was supposed to drive up with BIL (they live together) and stay from 12/20-1/5 and we'd said he could stay with us from 12/20-12/23. There were delays so they didn't arrive until 12/23, so he stayed with us until yesterday. H said he hung around yesterday until like 3pm trying to find friends to have a meal with or something, and he's apparently moving on to his sister's one BR apt to sleep on her pull out couch. Back when he told my SIL how long he was staying here she found him an AirBNB he could rent during that time for short money and urged him to book it. Of course he did not. This isn't a money thing, he can afford to pay for a place to stay, but I think he has these illusions that he will stay with family and they will entertain him day to day. He's stayed with us enough to know that isn't the case - we are working, taking DD to activities and are just generally busy and our lives don't stop because he's here. It's a constant source of stress feeling "responsible" for him in some way when he's here for these huge stretches and I know people wonder why we don't let him stay long since we have the space. We can't. It's just too much and H is so annoyed when he's around (for a variety of reasons) that it's hard for ME to deal with H.
My dad's cousin passed away unexpectedly last night. I'm trying to figure out if I need to go to the funeral. I mostly don't want to have to go and hug people I barely know. My family has never been close. I'm honestly not sure I've seen this part of the family in the last 20 years.
What do normal people do in this situation?
Is it local? If not, and you haven’t seen them in so long, unless your dad needs you there, I would skip it and send flowers if you feel obligated.
I am not close to much of my extended family. And in this situation, I would doubt any of us would come to a cousin of another generation. Then again, many of my dads siblings didn’t come to his funeral. i did go to an uncle’s that I probably wouldn’t have except I was the only extended family within driving distance. So I went as that side of the family.
House is pretty much back to normal- need to find homes for a few more things but I'm looking forward to coming home to a house that's completely clean and reset for the new year when we get back from the ILs' on Saturday.
Otherwise it's a low-key post-holiday day here. Catching up on laundry, putzing with new stuff, generally doing whatever we want. We will head to my parents' house late afternoon-ish so we can hang out with my aunt again before we head to the ILs' tomorrow, and I think we're going to stay there for dinner and order pizza.
My mom loves animals and several years ago she was asked to help feed a feral cat colony 10 minutes from her house. That means she has to do it everyday. She has no help and she wouldn’t accept help anyway because people don’t do it “right.” This costs her a ton of money (feeding 30 cats) and means she cannot go on vacation, every holiday the cats must be tended to, every time we have an evening obligation for my kids or a birthday dinner we have to schedule around when she can do the cats. The cats must be fed at dusk. The place where she does this is an isolated warehouse district. She has been yelled at by people even though this isn’t on private property. At times my dad has helped her like if she wants to come up to my house or go see her bff overnight who has moved several hours away. He has said that he doesn’t want to do this anymore. I don’t blame him. He has saved no money for retirement and my mom is paying for everything out of money she received from a sale of rhe family business and they are not in great financial shape at all. She holds this over his head to keep doing it. The dysfunction is real. I love animals and I know she wants to help them, but this has become just ridiculous. She was just yelling at me about my dad not helping her anymore and said she’ll never be able to come up to our house:..I mean you have made the decision that this your priority, you can’t make it anyone else’s. I am so fed up.
Reading this reminds me of my maternal grandma. While not quite the same, she did feed any number of stray cats in her neighborhood (usually 5-10 at a time) who would come to her house for food. She spent a small fortune on canned food, but no one could dissuade her that it was not financially healthy for her to do this. Similar to your situation, her travel was very limited, because only my grandpa (they were divorced, but by this time they were on friendly terms again, and they only lived a few blocks apart) was her one option to come over and feed the cats 1-2x a day and clean up the litter every few days, but after his health started declining, he wasn't able to help her out. She also kept some of the cats as her own, but as she got older she couldn't clean up after them. There were flea infestations in the house, which made it miserable to visit her. When my mom would go over once a week to help my grandma in the last 10 years of my grandma's life, my mom would sweep/vacuum, clean up hairballs, places where the cats peed, etc., but my mom refused to clean up the cat litter. Any time my mom would suggest she stop feeding strays, my grandma would throw a fit and get mad at my mom. When my grandma passed away (she lived in the home she had since the 1940s), there was an entire room (about 6'x8') with multiple cat litter boxes. One of my cousins volunteered to clean up the whole room (I was pregnant with DD at the time and couldn't help even if I wanted to). It was sad that cats had become her priority over her family and wellbeing.
I'm sorry, mcppalmbeach , I hope your mom will be able to adjust her priorities. (Have you considered calling animal control or a rescue to see if they will capture and move the cat colony somewhere else? Just a thought to see if that would resolve the problem without your mom feeling like she's abandoning the cats.)
mcppalmbeach, I'd reach out to a few shelters in the area and see if there is anything they can do. Can they capture them and make sure they are spayed/ nuetered- put them up for adoption etc.? I'm not really advocating for them to be put down, but it is obvious that the feral cat population is out of control in that area. I don't think I would reach out to animal control, but I do wonder what the city thinks about it. What happens if residents and businesses contact the city?
To join in on the fun, my husband had his last day at work on 12/15 (laid off) and on 12/16 our washing machine broke. We also replaced both the washer and dryer because they were 14 years old and the dryer wasn’t working the most efficiently either. They are finally being delivered tomorrow.
I’m sorry! What did you do for laundry in the meantime? I’ve never used a laundromat and am dreading the thought of hours spent waiting around in one, but the alternative is using my in-laws machines and that’s not appealing either.
Post by lilypad1126 on Dec 27, 2023 12:31:38 GMT -5
My H took his car in yesterday for an oil change and to have them look at the back lift gate that won't unlock. Almost $1800 later, he's getting something fixed on his front end, the oil changed, and the liftgate will forever stay locked b/c that would have cost an additional $500. OMG. His car is 10 years old, super low mileage, and otherwise in great shape, so this makes sense, but oof. That was an expense we were not expecting.
It's definitely better this happened to his car than mine, b/c I likely would have said the heck with it and bought a new car, ha! But we have a tentative plan of him driving this for another 2 years (assuming it lasts that long), then he'll take over my car and I'll buy new at that point. We'll see if we can make it that long. But my car will be paid off in May, so we'd at least like to put off making a real decision until then.
To join in on the fun, my husband had his last day at work on 12/15 (laid off) and on 12/16 our washing machine broke. We also replaced both the washer and dryer because they were 14 years old and the dryer wasn’t working the most efficiently either. They are finally being delivered tomorrow.
I’m sorry! What did you do for laundry in the meantime? I’ve never used a laundromat and am dreading the thought of hours spent waiting around in one, but the alternative is using my in-laws machines and that’s not appealing either.
Haha we used the in law option! If we had needed to do more than 1 weeks worth of laundry at their house we probably would have started using a laundromat because at least theoretically you can get them all going at the same time and it’s over faster. Since we were at their house for Christmas anyway it wasn’t too terrible.
To join in on the fun, my husband had his last day at work on 12/15 (laid off) and on 12/16 our washing machine broke. We also replaced both the washer and dryer because they were 14 years old and the dryer wasn’t working the most efficiently either. They are finally being delivered tomorrow.
I’m sorry! What did you do for laundry in the meantime? I’ve never used a laundromat and am dreading the thought of hours spent waiting around in one, but the alternative is using my in-laws machines and that’s not appealing either.
The good thing about a laundromat is that you can use a few machines at the same time!
My dad's cousin passed away unexpectedly last night. I'm trying to figure out if I need to go to the funeral. I mostly don't want to have to go and hug people I barely know. My family has never been close. I'm honestly not sure I've seen this part of the family in the last 20 years.
What do normal people do in this situation?
Is it local? If not, and you haven’t seen them in so long, unless your dad needs you there, I would skip it and send flowers if you feel obligated.
I am not close to much of my extended family. And in this situation, I would doubt any of us would come to a cousin of another generation. Then again, many of my dads siblings didn’t come to his funeral. i did go to an uncle’s that I probably wouldn’t have except I was the only extended family within driving distance. So I went as that side of the family.
It's about an hour away. I certainly wouldn't consider traveling. One other consideration is said cousin's parents are still alive. The dad is almost 100 and in poor health. The mom is in decent health, but I'm sure she's devastated. If her husband passes soon (which seems likely), I could see her losing the will to live. I don't want to go to 3 funerals for people I barely know. I feel like attending 1 is reasonable. For some reason, my parents generation really didn't reproduce (I'm the sole member of my generation), so I don't have any peers in the family I can check in with to see what they're doing. We're an odd family.
I’m sorry! What did you do for laundry in the meantime? I’ve never used a laundromat and am dreading the thought of hours spent waiting around in one, but the alternative is using my in-laws machines and that’s not appealing either.
Haha we used the in law option! If we had needed to do more than 1 weeks worth of laundry at their house we probably would have started using a laundromat because at least theoretically you can get them all going at the same time and it’s over faster. Since we were at their house for Christmas anyway it wasn’t too terrible.
I'm glad you had a family option. When my washer and dryer went out DS was potty training. We didn't live near family at that time. I did laundry at 2 different friends' houses in the week it took to get a new set delivered and installed.
H had another bleeding episode last night and we had to call 911 since it wouldn't stop. He had this happen when DS was a newborn and was told to see a specialist then but never did. He's had other episodes over the past few years but was able to get the bleeding to stop. I've told him countless times to make at least an appointment with a PCP, but of course he didn't.
Maybe TW (bodily fluids mentioned)***
His bedroom looks like a crime scene. I did my best to remove the blood but the carpet will absolutely have to be replaced. DS was petrified and all H did was yell at him. I tried my best to keep DS away, but it was chaos. The medics and firefighters were fantastic.
He was discharged at 3am with the same instructions as 6 years ago. I sent him a list of doctors and am hoping he calls. If nothing else, your kid seeing you in a pool of blood should be a wake up call.
I'm emotionally and physically exhausted. My boss was understanding and let me take the day off even though work is going to be insane today.
Ugh sorry he’s dealing with that! But can you clarify where he is bleeding from? (I’m just curious/nosy and it wasn’t clear from your post, hope ok to ask!)
Post by nancybotwin on Dec 27, 2023 13:58:40 GMT -5
Wishing those with laundry issues an easy path to clean underwear. blondemoment123 I hope you’re able to move forward in all the ways you want.
We are currently away with my in-laws. I have been calling this “the trip when we take MIL and FIL on their yearly vacation.” Their physical and mental well being has deteriorated the last few years and they are incapable of going away alone, but they love doing it. I love them to pieces, and they are so good to us, so I am glad to do this for them, but I’m hitting my limit. My MIL has a way of asking if you want something in order to indicate that she wants to — “do you want a cup of coffee?” means “make me a cup of coffee” and “do you want to go to the after Christmas sales at the mall?” means “can you take me to Macy’s?” I just took DD2 and DS to the pool, just to get out of the house for a bit. DH seemed annoyed that i left him behind, but they are his parents so he can deal…
H had another bleeding episode last night and we had to call 911 since it wouldn't stop. He had this happen when DS was a newborn and was told to see a specialist then but never did. He's had other episodes over the past few years but was able to get the bleeding to stop. I've told him countless times to make at least an appointment with a PCP, but of course he didn't.
Maybe TW (bodily fluids mentioned)***
His bedroom looks like a crime scene. I did my best to remove the blood but the carpet will absolutely have to be replaced. DS was petrified and all H did was yell at him. I tried my best to keep DS away, but it was chaos. The medics and firefighters were fantastic.
He was discharged at 3am with the same instructions as 6 years ago. I sent him a list of doctors and am hoping he calls. If nothing else, your kid seeing you in a pool of blood should be a wake up call.
I'm emotionally and physically exhausted. My boss was understanding and let me take the day off even though work is going to be insane today.
Ugh sorry he’s dealing with that! But can you clarify where he is bleeding from? (I’m just curious/nosy and it wasn’t clear from your post, hope ok to ask!)
A burst varicose vein.
I don't know what to do. He's refusing to call any doctors offices and won't answer me when I ask exactly what they did in the ER last night. I needed to get out so I took DS to my moms and am just sitting in the grocery store parking lot sobbing.
How much of a jerk am I going to be when I file and he has a serious medical condition?! I'm already consumed by guilt and this makes it ao much worse.
Ugh sorry he’s dealing with that! But can you clarify where he is bleeding from? (I’m just curious/nosy and it wasn’t clear from your post, hope ok to ask!)
A burst varicose vein.
I don't know what to do. He's refusing to call any doctors offices and won't answer me when I ask exactly what they did in the ER last night. I needed to get out so I took DS to my moms and am just sitting in the grocery store parking lot sobbing.
How much of a jerk am I going to be when I file and he has a serious medical condition?! I'm already consumed by guilt and this makes it ao much worse.
You are not responsible for his personal medical decisions. That is not something you can or should feel responsible for controlling. He's an adult. He has the information he needs to get help and is refusing to do so. Staying or going isn't going to change that, but it will absolutely improve your life to make this change.
Post by blondemoment123 on Dec 27, 2023 14:33:26 GMT -5
Oh since last night was such a mess I didn't do the litter box on time according to my kitty this morning and my girl peed on the dryer. Wtf cat! I have enough to deal with lol.
I took a ball to the head at soccer last night. I wasn’t even playing at the time. I was outside the rink subbed out and had turned my head to talk to someone. Someone kicked the ball and it hit me square in the side of my head. I never saw it coming.
I definitely have a concussion. I helped DS2 set up a fort and had to take a break to lie down halfway through. I’m so irritated about it and really hoping this doesn’t last more than a couple days.
Post by maudefindlay on Dec 27, 2023 14:46:01 GMT -5
blondemoment123 you are not the jerk in this scenario. You have been toughing it out and putting forth all the effort. That isn't sustainable for anyone. I do think you should consider a phone for your DS so he can call you any time when he stays with his Dad. If something like this happens he needs to be able to call 911.
Is it local? If not, and you haven’t seen them in so long, unless your dad needs you there, I would skip it and send flowers if you feel obligated.
I am not close to much of my extended family. And in this situation, I would doubt any of us would come to a cousin of another generation. Then again, many of my dads siblings didn’t come to his funeral. i did go to an uncle’s that I probably wouldn’t have except I was the only extended family within driving distance. So I went as that side of the family.
It's about an hour away. I certainly wouldn't consider traveling. One other consideration is said cousin's parents are still alive. The dad is almost 100 and in poor health. The mom is in decent health, but I'm sure she's devastated. If her husband passes soon (which seems likely), I could see her losing the will to live. I don't want to go to 3 funerals for people I barely know. I feel like attending 1 is reasonable. For some reason, my parents generation really didn't reproduce (I'm the sole member of my generation), so I don't have any peers in the family I can check in with to see what they're doing. We're an odd family.
It sounds like you don't want to go and don't have time in your schedule. Given the distance in the family, you are definitely not obligated to go.
I would say go if you wanted to reconnect with that side of the family and see the 100 year old before he passes. I don't think going to one funeral means you have to go to more in the family.
Ugh sorry he’s dealing with that! But can you clarify where he is bleeding from? (I’m just curious/nosy and it wasn’t clear from your post, hope ok to ask!)
A burst varicose vein.
I don't know what to do. He's refusing to call any doctors offices and won't answer me when I ask exactly what they did in the ER last night. I needed to get out so I took DS to my moms and am just sitting in the grocery store parking lot sobbing.
How much of a jerk am I going to be when I file and he has a serious medical condition?! I'm already consumed by guilt and this makes it ao much worse.
Ahh ok got it! My mind went to rectal bleeding for some reason. He’s responsible for his own health. If you’re planning a divorce I would not feel guilty if he’s dragging his feet on dealing with his varicose vein. Usually the treatment is sclerotherapy from what I’ve seen and that’s pretty straight forward.
Post by followyourarrow on Dec 27, 2023 15:35:33 GMT -5
I work in a large manufacturing facility. The facility is shut down for the software upgrades. I keep hearing noises, I think from my ceiling. I can't decide if I have a mouse or if it's just because I don't hear the constant noise from machines and forklifts.
So far break has been a nice mix of family parties, eating, reading, watching tv/movies and taking care of a few things around the house. Today I finally decided to tackle some laundry but am watching tv in between loads so it's not a big lift.
The one big thing I am determined to still tackle is to corral the huge Barbie collection and post it for sale because kid doesn't play with them anymore and is ready to let them go. I'm just going to post it as one big lot to make my life easier. If I was smarter/more organized I'd have done it before Christmas because it might have sold faster but here we are. It won't bother me if it takes a bit to sell because it will all be organized together. And I already have plans for the set of drawers that most of it is in so they won't just become junk collectors!
I work in a large manufacturing facility. The facility is shut down for the software upgrades. I keep hearing noises, I think from my ceiling. I can't decide if I have a mouse or if it's just because I don't hear the constant noise from machines and forklifts.
Sounds like a good reason to put on some music if you are able to
Post by sunnysally on Dec 27, 2023 15:47:56 GMT -5
We have an outside storage bench that we use for bird food. The food is in additional containers inside the bench. The squirrels have decided to start chewing on the bench. I went out today, opened the bench, and a squirrel leaped out, landed on my leg and ran down. I screamed and then was laughing so hard. The squirrels are so naughty yet so entertaining. I took the food containers out and will store them in the garage for awhile. I'm hoping the squirrels will forget there was ever food in the bench.
After that, a few Jehovah's Witness came to the door. I think I prefer dealing with squirrels.
blondemoment123 you are not the jerk in this scenario. You have been toughing it out and putting forth all the effort. That isn't sustainable for anyone. I do think you should consider a phone for your DS so he can call you any time when he stays with his Dad. If something like this happens he needs to be able to call 911.
Post by blondemoment123 on Dec 27, 2023 16:08:01 GMT -5
Ok on a much lighter note, my parents have a cleaning company at their house today to tackle the disaster that my brother left when he moved out.
It turns out the owner was one of my dads students (my dad helps folks leaving the military with transitioning into civilian life). Small world! And they were so happy to see each other and catch up.